Prelude
by hyacinthian
Summary: It's when she sees the roomstrangely out of time, dusty and filled with knickknacks from her timethat she begins to understand the TARDIS knew. She only needed to understand. [implied TenRose spoilers for Smith and Jones]


The TARDIS is a hard place to get used to. The humming, she can deal with. Working as an intern at a hospital hardly means the absence of noise. She welcomes the humming. It makes her feel more at…well…work. It reminds her of the life support machines she's always stuck monitoring. What she can't deal with is the Harry-Potter-esque way the hallways seem to shift. It's not so much that they _move_, it's the way they act. Sometimes, she'll walk and forget her way, and the corridors seem to stretch on for miles.

He tells her that it's a trait. She just has to get used to it.

She's never been one to quietly sit and get used to things. She's always been one to explore, to question, and she's hardly going to take this one sitting down. She looks around and tries to memorize the layout of the inside, as best she can. (Sometimes, it's hard for her to comprehend that the inside of the box is so _big_.) One day, she stumbles upon a wardrobe, a humongous walk in closet, really, filled with clothes from every century in every style. She picks up a toga, and, just for a laugh, presses the hanger against her, watching the white contrast with her dark skin. She wondered if the Romans would ever have seen the likes of her.

They're walking around in Norway one day, the Doctor looking extremely sad, when she asks him what seems to be a stupid question. "How come they all speak such good English?" He stares at the sand of the beach and at his shoes, so she repeats her question. He looks up at her, and she sees something like pain in his eyes.

"Oh," he says, clearing his throat. "They don't. It's the TARDIS."

She crinkles her eyebrows. "The TARDIS?"

"It gets inside your head and it translates for you." Her lips curve into a small "oh" of understanding, and she pauses, her hands falling on her hips. He looks at her oddly, his lips twitching, almost as if he expects her to react differently. Hit him, yell at him—something less passive.

"Doctor?" He looks up, but his gaze barely meets hers. "Where are we?"

He looks around, a sad smile gracing his face. He kicks at the sand. "Just a bit further," he says, and she notices how he doesn't reach for her hand like he usually does. So she walks behind him when he suddenly stops. Almost mechanically, he turns around and takes two steps backwards. She doesn't follow. She watches as he raises his hand to palm the open air.

"Doctor?"

"Bad Wolf Bay," he whispers. "We're at Bad Wolf Bay." That's the day she learns a little more about the Doctor and how human he can be.

She wanders through the TARDIS sometimes because, with him, she's got all the time in the world. Sometimes, it feels like the TARDIS purposefully leads her places. The wardrobe was place number one—the wardrobe where she found a clothing item that didn't seem to fit. Hanging loosely on a wooden clothes hanger, contrasting with the subtle browns and blacks was a bright pink sweatshirt. She pulls it out, feels the fleece material, and catches the faintest scent of something human.

That's the day things start to make sense. She learns not to talk about Bad Wolf Bay.

Sometimes she makes them both tea, and they sit in the control room and talk for hours. At the best of times, it feels like they're the best of friends. (She tries not to think about the small crush she has on him.) At the worst of times, it feels like the phoniest of acts, the sheerest of veneers, like actors on a television drama or something stupid. And one night, it seems like something caught between the two, the most mediocre of times.

She cradles her steaming mug of tea between her hands, taking a precarious sip here and there. The Doctor's face is lit up with his manic grin, and she laughs, despite herself. As she takes a few deep breaths to settle her laughter, she looks into his eyes. "Did you, um, did you ever have someone?"

He furrows his eyebrows. "Someone?"

"You spoke to me about her once," she says. "You said I wasn't going to be her replacement." His face falls faster than she could have imagined.

His response is a throaty, "Oh."

"Well, I was just—if you wouldn't—I don't mean to intrude." She settles for the tried-and-true polite response because she can't think of anything else to say. "I was just curious."

He crinkles his nose. "Yes. You are a nosy race," he comments. She tries to ignore it.

"I'm not trying to pry or anything. If you were up to it, I just wanted to know about her. What was she like?"

He smiles at the memory. "Her name was Rose," he whispers. She sits silent, sipping at her tea.

"Rose," she repeats.

"Rose Tyler," he says, with a smile. "I once called her defender of the earth."

"What was she like?"

"She was a bit like you," he murmurs. "Curious, always pokin' about, wanting to help people. She traveled with me for a while. Two years."

"And you were together?" He settles for a nod. "What happened? Why isn't she still traveling with you?"

He shuts his eyes and rubs at his temples. "I lost her." He gets up, and sets his mug down. "Thanks for the tea." He walks away, and she's left, sitting there, feeling like she just committed a grave mistake.

When she wanders the hall that night, looking for a spare room, she finds herself face to face with a closed mahogany door. Her curiosity gets the better of her. Dropping the suitcase in the hall, she enters the room, shutting the door closed behind her.

The room is excessively girly. It seems out-of-place somehow; the room is a picture of _her _time while everything else is so…alien. She spots a variety of knick-knacks lying around on dusty shelves. Her fingers itch with curiosity. She wants to pick one up, to see what it is, but she gets the feeling that she's in a no-man's-land, that she shouldn't be here, that she shouldn't touch anything. It feels too sacred. The bed has a bright pink comforter on it, the sheets rumpled, as if someone had just risen from them, too busy to be bothered with making the bed. A strong fragrance lingers in the room, almost as if the previous resident had just stepped out for a second. Rose, her name was? She wanders around the room, its stillness and silence creating a creepy aura. She thinks it's almost like a museum.

She picks up a small picture frame near the bed. A blonde girl, smiling, hair blowing about the wind, standing next to her mother, she guessed. She sets the picture down, almost afraid to disturb anything in the small shrine of a room. Dust has settled over the room in its disuse, and she feels a nagging urge to clean. The door opens with a small creak.

The Doctor enters, his usual knack for drama replaced by a strange solemnity. "What're you doin'?"

"Oh, I—" She tries for some kind of rational explanation, but he interrupts her.

"Out."

She follows his order, but stands in the middle of the hallway for a while afterwards, feeling a bit like a chastised child. Eyes boring into dead wood, she feels a small bit of understanding wriggle its way into her mind.

Alien or not, he's still a man (metaphorically speaking), and a man in pain, at that. She places a hand flat against the door, hoping to feel something, anything that will give her a better understanding of who he is. But there's nothing else. Just a room, a single room, everything kept as it was when she left it, when he lost her to…aliens or space or time or something.

It's odd to think that four words could have such powerful meaning, but they do. _Her name was Rose_. It echoes in her mind.

_Hello, Rose_. And as she turns away, she picks up her suitcase, and takes one glance back. _Goodbye, Rose_. The TARDIS hums noisily, and she nods to no one in particular. It just needed her to understand, to see.

She never comes across that room again.


End file.
